The relationship between unemployment and GDP is called Okun's law. It is the association of a higher national economic output with the decrease in national unemployment. This is because in order to increase the economic output of a country, people will need to go back to work, thus lowering unemployment. Empirical studies on the relationship between GDP and unemployment show that for every percentage point fall in the unemployment rate there is an increase in GDP by 2.5 percent. Experts believe that the reason for this large coefficient is because the unemployment rate does not count discourages workers who obtain a job before they are counted in the unemployment numbers. Another reason is when economic output increases firms typically don't hire new workers but have their current workers work for longer hours. Also some industries have increasing returns to scale where increasing the labor force has a multiplicative effect on their output.
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